This is not a personal attack on anybody.
It seems to me that a lot of people say that they are willing to pay more in taxes in order to help poor people, but when the government lowers their taxes, not only do they gladly accept the lowering of their taxes, they do not give any more money to people in need. I saw this a lot with my parents friends. As far as I can tell this is the only argument I know of that makes me wonder at the necessity of government programs to aid poor people.
4 comments:
Most people are willing to do their part, but only as long as they know everyone else is also going to do their part. I think that's a consistent position.
For example, I'd probably vote for a law requiring a $10/year tax on everyone to clean up the environment. But if it didn't pass, I probably wouldn't voluntarily send a $10 check to a cleanup fund. Why? Because (a) it's not fair that the burden should fall disproportionately on me just because I'm a sucker, and (b) I have little faith that enough people would contribute for my check to have any real positive impact on the problem.
I agree with you that the two situations are not perfectly analogous. Your point about compassion is good, and probably explains why people voluntarily DO give far more money to the poor than to the environment.
That said, I think both reasons I mentioned above still have force in the poverty issue.
(a) Perception of unfairness: It is unfair for the burden of helping the poor to fall on a few generous people. I'm no more responsible for the plight of the poor than I am for environmental problems. Both are societal problems--if I feel like I'm taking on too much of the burden of solving them while others who are equally responsible do nothing, it feels unfair.
(b) Fear of not making a real impact: If you see the problem narrowly (e.g., person X can't afford dinner tonight) your individual contribution helps. But if you see the problem in broader terms (e.g., there's a class of people who have subpar education, live in dangerous neighborhoods, and are either homeless or a paycheck away from homelessness), your $10 alone does virtually nothing to address the problem.
In (a), yes, I am saying that some people will be unwilling to give because they don't think anyone else will. In the case of giving money to the poor, that's probably a selfish decision. In the case of the environmental cleanup hypothetical, it's probably a reasonable decision, though not a particularly noble one. (The environment is important to me, but not important enough for me to throw away money pointlessly on it while those who pollute much more do nothing.) Either way, it's a common decision, as you pointed out in your original post.
Given that people have these attitudes, the only way to pay for things we think are important are to (1) let the voluntary do-gooders handle it, or (2) make everyone pay for their fair share of the problems they help cause. There are two problems with (1): it's unfair (why should the whole burden fall on the do-gooders?), and it usually doesn't produce enough money to solve the problems.
"I think that if you cut all government spending for poor people you would actually see an increase in charitable giving."
Not only is there no empirical evidence to support this claim, but there is actually evidence to support a contrary position. As I have coommented on your blog before, the only thing that consistently increases charitable giving is increasing the deductibility of the contributions against taxable income.
A cut in all government spending on the poor would likely have no impact on the overall level of charitable giving. A cut in welfare would have to be tied to an increase in the tax incentive for the contribution.
On SP's point A. The problem she is bringing up is systemic. It is one of the primary motivations for almost every government program, from regulation of securities to environmental policy to highway construction. I just don't think it's debatable that "the free rider" problem is relevant to the need for government action in this case.
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